Sinh Taylor’s entire vocation seemed to vanish overnight.
Taylor earned an undergraduate degree from Temple in gender, sexuality and women’s studies to serve transgender youth as an educator and social worker. For years, she eyed a graduate students’ partnership at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia that assigned master’s students to work with transgender kids through its Gender and Sexuality Development program.
In January, an executive order moved to end federal backing for work intertwined with diversity, equity and inclusion. Soon after, the National Institutes of Health and some Veterans Affairs branches began scouring grant applications for language they deemed “woke.”
It was the latest sign of a chilling effect working its way through the government and those partnered with it: Programs naming “women” and “COVID” found themselves flagged under the order. So did projects centered on the pursuit of racial justice. And organizations working with the LGBTQ community faced retribution that could impair their ability to function.
Since President Donald Trump took office, institutions with missions resembling CHOP’s support center began to worry they sat squarely on the chopping block.
“At first, I was thinking, ‘CHOP has great funders,’” said Taylor, a master’s of social work student. “‘They have a lot of private funders. They’re going to be fine.’”
Nope: The GSD graduate program and others like it recently disappeared with little public explanation. Taylor says she’s now considering jobs as a therapist, or a high school English teacher.
Many Temple students have wagered their futures on careers in government. They’ve studied in hopes of becoming regulators, litigators and investigators. Now, they’re unsure if they can still find work in Trump’s Washington, D.C. Perhaps more importantly, they’re unsure they want to.
Temporary workers at the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency are on a tear of sorts through the Potomac: Hectoring career civil servants into unemployment, claiming unilateral power to shutter agencies and gaining access to some of the American public’s most sensitive financial information, most recently IRS filing data.
Each drastic move has served to push the power of the executive past its legal limits: Trump has already lost challenges in the lower courts, and the Constitution gives Congress alone power over spending.
But many of the briefcase-carrying twentysomethings now roaming Washington cut their professional teeth in the tech industry. So did Musk and Vice President JD Vance. In Silicon Valley, the aims of leaders hailed as visionaries often take precedence over norms, ethics and even the law.
Temple Student Government advisor Shawn Aleong came to Temple and excelled despite complications from cerebral palsy. Aelong’s advocacy for the disabled drew the attention of those in power: Former President Joe Biden named Aleong to a council on intellectual disabilities in 2022.
It was a quote from Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall that drew the senior legal studies major to public service.
“In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute,” Marshall, the first African American to sit on the high court, once wrote.
Aleong remains on the council, nearly a month after Trump’s inauguration. “They ain’t fired me yet,” he said with a wry grin. He doesn’t want to work in a government that he believes holds human rights in contempt. But he also intends to remain on the council for now, if only to serve as a voice for the rights of the marginalized.
“Nothing like this has ever happened before, as far as I know,” said Michael Hagen, a political science professor whose introductory lectures tend to house several dozen underclassmen. “Never has there been a squad of non-elected officials mobilized to dig deep into the guts of these agencies and just start letting people go.”
Weeks after the shock and awe began, Hagen remains unsure how to explain to students what’s happening or how it might affect their futures.
“We all know the stories that have been published about people who have lost job offers, or have lost jobs that they thought they had, or been told they had, and then have been rescinded,” Hagen said. “But as far as future job prospects, it’s a little too soon to say.”
DOGE’s “move fast and break things” ethos affects more than government agencies. VA hospitals span the nation and dot major cities and small towns alike. Disaster relief often arrives through ever-changing medleys of public service organizations and politically-neutral relief agencies like FEMA.
Most famously, doctor’s offices, religious orders and nonprofits around the world have long partnered with Washington to form what former President George W. Bush called “armies of compassion.”
Service organizations razed by the Trump administration’s onslaught can’t simply resume their work if ever the money starts flowing again, Taylor said. But she also wondered if communities could reclaim the role of care nonprofits had only recently filled.
“I feel like people are going to step back and be more like, ‘I have to take care of my own as opposed to relying on this organization to take care of me,’” Taylor said.
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